Two Interpretations Before the Mast
by isuccumb
Summary: Variations on the kraken attack. Chapter 1: Smutty, vicious death. Chapter 2: Relatively happy death.
1. The AntiFluff

**A/N: **I got tired of fluff and wrote something. Then I got tired of angst and wrote something else. The first is AU in deed, the second in thought – sort of an exercise in the extremities of interpretation.

**Disclaimer: **Despite fantasies and hare-brained schemes, I continue not to own this. By 'this' I mean the source material. The fic is mine.

**The Anti-Fluff**

"I'm not sorry."

He _smiled_ at her, if such a thing could be believed, and the look he gave her was so knowing. His lips parted to speak. "Aren't you?" he asked. His free hand slipped softly into her hair and suddenly gripped tight. He yanked her head backwards, and her body had to follow; then he pulled in again, and she was trapped between him and the mast. "How about now?"

"Jack," she hissed.

"You don't have the key, do you, love?" he whispered against her ear.

He shifted just enough to fully lock her into place. He leaned against the mast and she was caught in the circle of his arm. She'd gotten into all kinds of disarray when he whirled her about; her shirt was rucked up, and she could feel the metal of the shackle and the warmth of his fingers against her bare side.

"Well, now, this takes me right back to the day we met."

Her breath hitched in her throat. His chains around her had been wrong and infuriating and thrilling then too, and then she hadn't just been kissing him. She shifted in his sham of an embrace. Somehow this situation was better if they met it face-to-face – front-to-front rather – if she could press the heat between her legs against the hardness between his and mock them both.

"You recall on that day you only almost escaped."

"Who said anything bout escaping?" His shackled arm had curled round her more truly, and now his long fingers slipped under her waistband, teasing the top of her cleft.

"I can't unchain you. Nothing you do can persuade me or offend me enough to change that."

"Hush, love, all's fair against someone who's just done something terribly unfair to you."

"There's nothing unfair about it! You would kill us all if you left this ship."

"As I see it, you've just killed me. Now I'm killing you, all right and proper. _You_, however, are now killing _them_, as you know William won't leave without you. Call out; tell them to go."

"Why don't you call, tell them to fetch us both?"

"I'm being good. _Call out._"

A sickening swell rocked the ship, and they heard shouts from the longboat.

"Elizabeth!"

"_Go!_" she screamed. "We can't make it. Just go!"

Another roll of the ship, and if they hadn't cast off lines down in the longboat, they'd be swamped. A moment later Jack and Elizabeth heard a shout, a struggle, a thunk that was undoubtedly an oar to the back of Will's hear, and then Gibbs's voice calling frantically, "Pull, lads!"

"Now we're both heroes," Jack sneered at her.

"Want to know what _that_ tastes like?" she spat back.

His mouth was on her in less than a second, and it tasted, as it turned out, like blood. The kiss was full of teeth, and it was insane to want someone who was holding you prisoner even closer. She dug her hands into all the belts and sashes he had fastened around his waist and jerked him forward. He obliged, not just pinning her now, but crushing her against the mast. His free hand ripped her shirt away, and he pulled his shackled hand from the seat of her breeches to drag her leg up around his hip. She wrenched her mouth away from his to chide his slowness. "I'd rather _not_ die a virgin, Jack, if it's all the same to you."

"Working on it, love," he gasped, but there was no time. She was tearing at his belts when the kraken surfaced. He was able only to plunge his hand down the front of her breeches and pierce her with two fingers. Her scream carried no pleasure, yet she pulsed around him as her teeth rent his shoulder and her blood coated his hand. Nothing to savor by decent people's standards as he came in his breeches and was swallowed by a sea monster still half-hard. For a death in chains, better than he'd expected. And this business with Lizzie, they'd finish it in hell.

**A/N 2: **Feedback of all sorts most welcome. Just, you know chain it to the mast and send it on down.


	2. The AntiAngst

**Disclaimer: **My owning of all things _Pirates_, it has not happened yet.

**The Anti-Angst**

"She's only a ship, mate."

_She's only a ship?_ There was a lie if Elizabeth had ever heard one. _Only the ship he'd sold his bloody soul for in the first place. _In fact, on the list of things Captain Jack Sparrow would never say and mean that had to rank second only to 'I think I'd like to settle down on a nice farm.' And Jack, who told the truth quite a lot, actually, and yet people were always surprised, lied when he was scheming.

The others – such a pitifully small handful of them left after the kraken's attacks – were dashing about, lowering the longboat, salvaging all they could in half a minute. Jack paid them no mind. Then the crew, and Will, began climbing over _The Pearl's_ rail, while Jack hung back, running his fingers over random and various of the ship's fittings.

Oh, _God._ She had known he was a good man, and he had already proven her right, and now… Her heart twisted under her breastbone in a way she would never, ever mention to Will. She wanted to do something for him, give him something in these last moments. Trying to talk him out of it was out of the question – she couldn't take this from him, and besides it would be stupid and get everyone killed.

Christ, she was standing here watching a man _martyr_ himself, thinking about secrets to keep from her fiancé and calculating survival rates. He'd been right about her too. Well, thank God. She could give him that.

"Thank you, Jack," she called to him and was relieved when he looked up. So he _could_ be distracted from his ship, at least for the minute she'd need.

"We're not free yet, love." Oh, terrible. It had been irritating when he'd called her 'love' before, but it had never _hurt_.

"You came back. I always knew you were a good man." _And you always knew about me. You'll see. _She leaned in to kiss him, and she could feel his surprise in the way his lips took just a moment to respond, but when they did, _oh…_ At least this had worked out well and neatly – giving him what she could, she got this taste from him.Give and take was lovely, almost a fraction as lovely as this kiss. His hands stayed at his sides as she pushed him back toward the mast, and she suspected he was feeling what she was feeling – that to grab hold would mean never wanting to let go. Neither of them could afford that now.

Her hand slid down his arm, and her fingers traced fleetingly over his before she lifted the shackle and clamped it around his wrist. "It's after you, not the ship. It's not us. This is the only way, don't you see?" she asked, as if he didn't. She leaned in to kiss him again, but that would have tempted her to do something stupid and heroic like Will was always doing and stay with him. It would ruin the point she was trying to make if she let herself die in someone else's sacrifice. She pulled back.

"I'm not sorry." And that was another lie. She was sorry for a lot of things – that he'd been such a damned fool as to sell his soul in the first place, that Norrington was a tricky bastard, that she didn't have Neptune's trident hidden under her tricorn, all pointy and perfect for skewering a kraken. But she wasn't sorry for the kiss or that he'd been right about her, and if he'd been a coward and made this necessary, she wouldn't have been sorry for doing it then.

And she wasn't sorry to see Jack was smiling at her, looking smug and proud and awed and covetous all at once. What he was _not _looking was melancholy like he'd been when she interrupted his caressing of the ship. That was good. "Pirate," he pronounced, and he could not have understood her better.

He didn't try to hold her as she stepped away; men never seemed to have much trouble letting her go for her own good. In the longboat she announced, "He elected to stay behind to give us a chance," her voice brittle with the effort of reminding herself she was proud of that, not sorry. God_damn_ him for being so good. She sincerely hoped God did not listen to prayers of pirates.

- SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS -

"Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, _bugger!_" It was a lovely gesture Lizzie had made, one the thought of which would doubtless keep him warm on the cold…cool on the hot nights in hell; still, he'd really hoped to have his sword hand free for his triumphal exit. To the end, though, he _was _Captain Jack Sparrow…Ahh, a lantern.

- SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS -

When Tia Dalma declared that they could get Jack back, Elizabeth was overjoyed. Well, in shock first, but then overjoyed. Nearing giddy. Piracy, it seemed, was the mother of all loopholes. Or loopholes were the essence piracy. Either way, this was indeed the life. Yo _ho_.

**A/N:** Well, OK…but for a _death scene_ it was low angst! Still lovin' the feedback. Kiss it good-bye and send it along to me.


End file.
